Balls and sticks
by wanderingsmith
Summary: Siler fic, Sam/Jack UST implied - Late night poker in the infirmary between two colleagues


Summary: A night in the infirmary  
Rating: PG13  
Disclaimer: I ain't got no money, and nobody'd be daft enough to pay me for this.

AN: _At some point over the first 5 years of SG-1_

_This is part of a verse that I am not posting to fanfic dot net called Sam and her boys. But since Siler needs more fic and this works stand-alone... :)_

"Psst."

Siler blinked, awake but groggy from the morphine that wouldn't let him sleep.

"Hey. Sergeant."

The cotton ball glancing off his nose had more to do with making him focus than the shaky whisper did, but when he did, he wasn't surprised at the owner of the voice. The colonel had been driving the nurses crazy all day.

Laying in his own bed, doped to the gills, it'd been a real challenge to keep the smirk off his face. The man knew how to get under people's skins. If Doc Fraser wasn't around to threaten him with big needles, Siler knew a couple of the girls well enough to know they would definitely have ended up 'accidentally' injecting sleeping aid into the colonel's IV line.

The second ball bouncing off his forehead reminded him to focus. "Ye', 'ir?" Damn, he hated when the lisp got out of control. Bloody meds and his damned reaction to them.

Turning his head, he watched as O'Neill fumbled his blanket around his shoulders and then tried to move the uncooperative rolling work surface/tray from the foot of his bed closer to both their hands without making a sound in the nighttime infirmary.

"Oh." Finally surfacing from the haze, Siler sat up, glad his broken foot remained dead to him, and grabbed the edge of the tray, easily lifting it and positioning it silently to bridge the space between them. Looking up at the dazed-eyed man sitting on the edge of his bed, he tried to quirk a brow; feeling his face muscles a little sluggish, he pretty much gave up on expressions for the duration and whispered, "You have them?"

The colonel didn't dignify the doubt with an answer, reaching under his pillow to pull out the deck of cards with the leather-clad biker chicks on it; almost falling over in the process. He straightened, catching sight of Siler's hand, outreached in case he started tilting toward the floor.

They'd both spent enough time in this room in such states that even male bravado had taken a backseat to practical gratitude for avoiding breaking ones nose on the cement floor. So O'Neill's only reaction was a grimace, acknowledging the weakness and his annoyance with it.

As soon as he put the cards down, Siler started shuffling them, ears tuned for Lieutenant Nurse Fay doing a walkabout. Or anyone else stirring.

"Balls or sticks?"

He looked up from his hands at the question, watched the uncooperative cotton balls and sent a glare at his dope-inserting IV line before answering gruffly, "Wood." Tongue depressors should be easier to manage when his fingers got drug-shaky.

####

"I'll see your two cotton balls and raise you a wooden stick."

Siler briefly froze with a frown as a sound reached his ears. A second later, he realized it was Lieutenant Kain's snoring and went back to evaluating his hand and his options. Since he wasn't getting any sleep even if the colonel somehow had a better hand, he carefully laid his pillow on top of his pile of cotton and wood, "Raise you a pillow."

O'Neill looked at his own pillow consideringly, making Siler mentally snigger at the lack of a poker face tonight, but then the man shook his head, "Can't be bothered to move it." Siler sat quietly and watched his opponent try to find something to bet, not commenting on the implication. It took effort but he kept the snort inside with no more than a blink as the man victoriously gripped his blanket. "How many blankets to a pillow, again?"

Watching him shake with fever, Siler raised a brow, "You're the one with the chills, not me; and we both know you like an extra pillow. Three."

When the colonel very reluctantly put all but one of his blankets in a pile and sat shivering, Siler resisted the pull of sympathy; he was a grown man, he made his choices and could live with them.

And this was going to be their last hand anyway.

He stopped to think if there was anything else he could barter and, staring absently at the blonde on the back of one of the colonel's cards, he remembered the colonel's pitifully-hidden attempt to get him out of Major Carter's lab yesterday so she'd go home before midnight. "Raise you my being too tired to work next time Sa-" he swallowed the name with a mental curse at the drugs, "Major Carter needs to be chased away from the base."

Watching the colonel's head jerk and his brows fly up, Siler was just as glad he felt numb and *couldn't* give away anything with a failed poker face. Had he given anything away with his *tone*??

"..Too *tired*??"

Siler had to admit it wasn't the most imaginative plan ever conceived.. but then, he was doped-up, what the hell did O'Neill expect? "I can do tir-"

"Gentlemen."

They both jumped as the stealthy night watch-woman managed to sneak up on their sick and drugged selves.

Fay Donovan frowned reprovingly at the two middle-aged men giving her all too similar guilty-little-boy looks.

"Sergeant, you weren't planning on taking those blankets away from my patient, were you?"

Jack, keeping silent and still to avoid getting them both in even more trouble, watched his opponent turn on the charm in the most understated way he'd ever witnessed, not baring his Jaffa teammate. No grin, no hand casually reaching out. Just the subtle posture relaxing, an invisible smile that only came out by some weird Jedi mind-trick. Trick that he could see immediately worked on the pretty blonde lieutenant.

" 'Course not," the man threw Jack an extremely minute look, "He was just.. redecorating."

Biting his tongue and blinking rapidly to refrain from snorting at the ridiculous story -the man was NOT undercover material, sheesh- Jack watched the woman who would have happily strong-armed a big needle into *his* hide.. instead melt and actually smile at the sergeant's **invisible(!!)** grin.

"*You* know I'm too nice to hurt anyone," Jack's jaw practically spasmed he clenched it so hard, "Last hand, promise we're almost done." Breathing very carefully, Jack listened to the even-toned wheedling and rolled his eyes behind the nurse's back as she *patted the sergeant's knee*, for crying out loud!

"It better be. You need to rest, sergeant," she turned and narrowed her eyes at Jack, "And so do you."

She checked and refilled Siler's drugs and Jack's temperature while they waited patiently, and then with a last soft look at Siler and rolled eye at the pictures on their cards, she walked out, closing the curtain back around them.

They were both still as they listened to her faint footsteps return to the office, and then Siler braced himself as the colonel turned to him with a smirk.

"Fast work. Didn't she just transfer here?"

He shrugged, used to the envy over his success with nurses, "Few weeks ago." Just in time for him to get stuck here for a day with a concussion and score himself a new friend.

The colonel snorted, "Between you and Daniel, I just don't get their tastes."

Siler mentally laughed at the barely-hidden jealousy, keeping his face impassive, "I'm told Doctor Jackson is," he wiggled one hand in an inverted comma, " 'Very cute'." Which he didn't 'get' any more than the man rolling his eyes at him.

" 'Cute'?? Danny-boy?? They should try him when he manages to talk you into a jail-cell with masochistic guards."

Agreeing with an uncaring shrug, Siler waved his cards and nodded to O'Neill's, "You raising?"

Looking down at his hand distractedly, the colonel grinned briefly and looked back at Siler, shivering again, "Sure. I'll raise ya the reason that Daniel grumbled *you* get ahead."

Siler turned the laugh that escaped him into a cough. After he'd seen her and the others playing a muffled round of rock, paper, scissor before she'd come to treat him, Linda had told him point-blank that they just enjoyed stripping him.

But it was still very tempting to make O'Neill say it.. "Call."

When the man almost dropped his card as he shivered again, Siler shook his head at the four of a kind, "Damn. Fold." He smoothly took all their cards and tidied the deck, mixing them all and fishing for the elastic without further ado.

The colonel frowned a little at not seeing the cards, possibly suspecting having won by pity, but finally shrugged and hunched hurriedly back into all his blankets, fishing their 'coins' off the table. When there was the noise of something getting banged, like a desk by a leg, followed by muffled swearing, he nodded toward the office and teased with a straight face, "Bit young isn't she?"

It took a second for the re-descending drug haze to let understand in, but then Siler gapped, freezing in the middle of fumbling his pillow back in place, his composure thrown, "Young??" Admittedly, you had to *know* that Fay had turned thirty, seeing as she looked younger, but still!! He barely kept his voice down as he rasped disbelievingly, "She's only a *few* years younger than Major Carter!" And the colonel was damn near the same few years older than *Siler*! Of all people to try to lecture him!!

Unable to reply properly without giving credence to rumours, the colonel had to satisfy himself with a glare for the implication.

Glaring right back and refusing to care that he was letting the officer see he'd gotten to him, Siler firmly decided that the next time, he was damn well cleaning out the idiot; sympathy was wasted on him. What the hell Sam saw in him...


End file.
